Burning sketches to the Arduino board with an external programmer

If you have an external programmer (e.g. an AVR-ISP, STK500, or parallel programmer), you can burn sketches to the Arduino board without using the bootloader. This allows you to use the full program space (flash) of the chip on the Arduino board. So with an ATmega168, you'll get 16 KB instead of 14 (on an ATmega8 you'll get 8 KB instead of 7). It also avoids the bootloader delay when you power or reset your board.
However you must have in mind that the Upload Using Programmer procedure doesn't burn fuses so, if you have a fresh factory micro-controller you have to burn the boot-loader first in order to have a properly working device.

This can be easily done in this way:

Tools->Boards->Your Board

Tools->Programmer->Your Programmer

Sketch->Upload Using a Programmer

Note

In order to come back to the default way to program your Arduino you have to rewrite the bootloader. To do this:

Tools->Boards->Your Board

Tools->Programmer->Your Programmer

Tools->Burn Bootloader

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